Sunday, 8 June 2008

The lighter side of being a student

As I finish my university course in a manner so unspeakable I fear for my life if I talk about it and just as much for having lost my opportunity to find a job and a future aside from wandering around and being banned from every place I frequent, it is perhaps better that I look on the lighter side of my experience of thirteen years as a student.

One of the most shocking and dreadful things I have ever seen in universities is toilet wall graffiti devoted to sexual attacks on other people. I have a recollection of a day at Monash where I saw graffiti painted with liquid paper in my toilet and with my nails removed it completely because of the extraordinarily obscene language about sexually active young people. I actually have a clear recollection that the liquid paper I removed made my fingers extremely off-white.
This piece about the founding of Israel, hated not for anti-Semitism but anti-Americanism, certainly shows that there opinions about the country different from what I have been familiar with at university. Since I left Melbourne, I have become aware of more conservative groups whose members’ ability to think of other people I desperately envy and always will. These groups say Israel has succeeded because of this dedication and its ability to create a free market in which nobody has a special privileges.
This diagram from the same location illustrates what I always assumed to be a very popular viewpoint about Israel. Even if you accept the viewpoint that there was some legitimacy in the way Jews bought land from Palestinian Arabs, there can be little doubt that there was discrimination against the Palestinians by the Israeli army and government, who were dedicated to the establishment of a Jewish state even against the Palestinians’ will.

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About Me

A former student at Melbourne and RMIT who hoped to get a job in librarianship by 2009.
Be wary that I tend to have very specialised interests and often do not want too general questions.
I enjoy reading about many difficult topics and would love to be able to discuss them with people who know more about them than people around me.
I have a particular love for lists of “best” or “worst” music or books, and love statistics a great deal.